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War
on AIDS Forgotten as U.S. Takes on Terrorism
By Lewis Machipisa
HARARE (IPS) - Paula Donovan flipped on Cable News Network (CNN)
one night while working on her laptop. Her plan was to edit a few
electronic slides to use at a media and civil society conference
on Gender, Rights and HIV/AIDS.
When
she plugged in new data, two tall grey bars on her computer screen
grew even taller - twin towers stretching up and over the halfway
mark.
Her concentration was, however, broken by breaking news being beamed
by the CNN showing the remains of the World Trade Centre towers
smouldering, and U.S. President George W. Bush committing full resources
of his government to a war against terror.
Bush has committed some 40 billion U.S. dollars to deal with the
disaster, and to punish those responsible for the terror attacks
on New York and Washington two weeks ago, and to prevent future
catastrophe.
The urgency with which the world has risen to deal with the terror
attacks in the United States has left Donovan wondering why the
international community has ignored a far much more serious scourge
that has killed millions of people worldwide.
''These past several days, I've been tormented by the impossibility
of understanding the gulf between zero tolerance for one injustice
and total apathy toward another,'' Donovan told participants in
Harare.
''Why hasn't HIV/AIDS, with all its in built and underlying injustice,
provoked collective indignation. Where is the global campaign borne
of fear and rage over HIV/AIDS, the single-minded determination
to root out its causes, the commitment of full resources, the admonition
to 'make no mistake about it,'' she wondered.
''Twenty years and millions of casualties into this worldwide pandemic,
where are the three minutes of silence for the victims of AIDS?''
Donovan asked.
Based in Nairobi, Kenya, Donovan is the regional advisor for Africa
of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). She was in the Zimbabwean
capital, Harare, attending a two-day Inter Press Service (IPS) media
and NGO conference on Gender, Rights and HIV/AIDS that ended on
Sep 26.
Equally worried about the terror attacks in the United States, Zimbabwe's
deputy health minister, David Parirenyatwa laments that not much
is being done to fight the HIV/AIDS war.
''If you look at the size of the population in Zimbabwe alone who
have died of HIV/AIDS, you realise we have a much bigger war,''
said Parirenyatwa, referring to the more than 1,000 people who die
of AIDS-related diseases every week.
''To me, that's a much bigger emergency that needs to be treated
just like how governments would deal with a war situation. The HIV/AIDS
problem is an even much bigger scale and we need resources of the
same magnitude and even much higher if we are to control the epidemic,''
he told IPS.
Since the beginning of the epidemic, about 25.3 million people are
living with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, 52 percent of whom are
women, according to the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
(UNAIDS).
''When thousands of innocent people are killed within few dreadful
minutes, anger is understandable. But that very basic human emotion
makes it that much more difficult to comprehend the world's indifference
when millions of innocent people die of AIDS one at a time,'' said
Donovan.
Louise Thomas-Mapleh of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said
''Africa is at the crossroads of a devastating HIV/AIDS infection
_ with a much more alarming effect on some of the most affluent
countries in the region''.
''Already, we have begun to experience retrogression in the advances
made in the health and social dimensions of our livelihood in the
past few decades,'' said Thomas Mapleh.
The disease has turned Africa into a killing field. Of the nearly
36 million children and adults living with HIV/AIDS, almost 23 million
are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the WHO.
Although the World Bank and UNAIDS announced a few years ago that
they have committed three billion dollars worth of resources annually
to fight the epidemic, the amount falls far short of the 250 billion
U.S. dollars needed in Africa each year to combat HIV/AIDS.
With no vaccine to cure HIV/AIDS in sight yet, the disease is crippling
the ability of many developing countries to become partners in the
global economy, with increased health costs, weakened economies
and diminished overseas markets costing billions of dollars each
year.
In many countries, AIDS is drastically reducing life expectancy
at birth, one of the key measures used to gauge human development.
In many sub-Saharan African countries life expectancy has been cut
by 15 to 30 years.
To combat the epidemic, the UN launched a 1.3-billion-U.S.-dollar
'Global Fund for HIV/AIDS and Health' over a month ago. (END/IPS)
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